


Seven Letters

by troublestarter12



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Apologies, Best Friends, Closure, Established Relationship, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Falling In Love, Falling Out of Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Enemies, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Kunimi Akira-centric, Letters, Long-Distance Friendship, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Oikawa Tooru's Knee Injury, Oikawa Tooru-centric, Out of Character, Past Relationship(s), Past and Present, Post-Break Up, Reconciliation, Repression, Sexuality Crisis, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Time Skips, Unrequited Love, friends to strangers, kind of crack, lovers to strangers, new relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29493507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troublestarter12/pseuds/troublestarter12
Summary: "Oikawa's out to get us," Kindaichi grumbles out."He always has been. But glad you finally noticed."Kindaichi and Kunimi are finally third years and the only things they care about are making it to nationals and keeping their grades fairly decent. They don't need to stress over what their ex-captain said about them in their first year but here they are.Or the one where Oikawa wrote letters in a notebook his third year and now somehow Kunimi has to deal with the fallout alongside the rest of the circus show that is his life.
Relationships: Aobajousai Volleyball Club & Original Character(s), Hanamaki Takahiro/Matsukawa Issei, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Kindaichi Yuutarou & Kunimi Akira, Kindaichi Yuutarou/Kunimi Akira
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	Seven Letters

April 21st, 2015

The new school year has started with the ringing in of students once again flooding the hall of Aoba Johsai. First years desperately search for their classrooms, trying to get around the large crowds. Third years take their sweet time even thinking of heading to their seat and rather stand in the halls and watch their last first day of high school pass them by. Kunimi Akira is no exception to that as he leans against Kindaichi Yuutarou’s locker. The sound of shoes skidding across the floor snaps his attention to the boy barreling towards him before reaching the locker, doubling over and out of breath. He takes a chance to check his phone and see that not only is Kindaichi late to arrive, he also looks like a train wreck. 

“Did you throw your alarm clock across the room again?” Kunimi raises his eyebrow, taking in how his friend’s hair is disheveled. His shirt is wrinkled, mouth still has crumbs of breakfast around it and his right shoe is untied. By some miracle he didn’t end up face down on the ground while running, or at least not that Kunimi got to see. 

Kindaichi sucks in a breath, standing upright once more with a red face, “No, not this time. I just lost track of time.” 

Kunimi smiles to himself and turns his eyes back to the hallway, now less crowded with only third years still milling about. He moves to the side as Kindaichi goes to open his new locker. 

“God, I’m never going to remember this new locker combination. I was just able to memorize the one from second year,” Kindaichi complains, “Why can’t we just keep the same lockers every year?”

“Because our school lives to torment teenagers with pea sized brains?”

“Probably but that’s just an everyday occurrence. This is more than an inconvenience, it’s a conspiracy against us.”

Kunimi rolls his eyes. He has heard this exact “conspiracy” at least three time every year since he has known Kindaichi and he really can’t handle it once again. 

“Okay, they have a plot to destroy us mentally. Just write down the combo everywhere until you can’t forget it. Put it on sticky notes around your mirror if need be but please don’t pull up the ‘Seijoh Conspiracy’ powerpoint again.”

Kindaichi huffs a little as he tries to get his locker open, “Fine, but only because I don’t feel like doing flying laps after practice.” 

“You still would if I told you to becauseー”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re the captain. Just remember I’m better at Mario Kart than you.”

Kunimi looks at Kindaichi blankly, “You main Princess Peach and die every two seconds on Rainbow Road.” 

“That is completely unconnected to the fact that I have higher scores than you do. As the better gamerー”

“You are not the better gamer between us. You almost cried playing Resident Evil last week,” Kunimi deadpans, “You also didn’t even know what Super Smash Bros was until our second year.”

“Why, you just can’t accept that you’re a sore loser. Everyone knowsー”

Someone clears their throat in front of them, causing the words to die on their tongues. They look to see another boy, a third year too, holding a blue notebook away from him. 

“You two are Kunimi and Kindaichi, right?” 

Kindaichi nods and throws a confused look at Kunimi. Kunimi is eyeing the other boy though, trying to discern who he is and just why he came to talk to them. He has light brown hair swept back from his face and brown eyes hidden behind a pair of clear rimmed glasses. He doesn’t play any sports if his thin frame and small figure with limited muscle mass says anything. He stands awkwardly, his feet pigeon toed and not a single wrinkle can be found on his shirt or pants. He looks so put together but he radiates nervous energy. By all accounts, they should be the ones approaching him when they need help on the homework they wouldn’t do until the day it was due and not the other way around. 

The boy sticks out his hand, it trembles lightly as he does so, “I’m Onisha Isao from Class 5. Ah, you know we got new lockers and well, I guess my locker’s last occupat left something behind.” 

Kunimi scrunches his eyebrows and the boy drops his hand, “Okay but what does that have to do with us?”

“Well, this notebook has both your names in it and I figured that maybe you guys could get it back to the owner,” Onisha twists his free hand into his pocket and shoves the notebook out further towards them.

“Why does it have our names in it? Is someone trying to Death Note us Kunimi?” Kindaichi definitely does not shriek at his best friend. 

Kunimi ignores the squawking, takes the plain notebook in his hand and flips to the first page. The handwriting looks like that of a girl’s with the title of ‘Chemistry Unit 1’ in bubble letters with multiple highlighter colors. But he knows better than that because as he fingers through the pages, the last seven look hauntingly familiar. So familiar that he doesn’t even read the pages before snapping the papers back together. 

“What locker is yours, Onisha?” Kunimi needs this final confirmation before he makes any rash decisions. 

“Oh it’s uh 125, the one right on the corner before the gym.”

Kindaichi looks between the two of them, trying to figure out why Kunimi freezes up at the answer before he remembers that locker, remembers the hoards of girls always surrounding it and the one person always standing there, “No. NO. It has been two years, it can’t…”

Kunimi side eyes Kindaichi and nods solemnly, “The handwriting matches. This notebook belongs to one ex-captain of the volleyball team, Oikawa Tooru.”

Onisha watches as Kindaichi turns around and hits his head against his locker, closing it after working to get it open for 10 minutes prior and mutters under his breath. Kunimi watches him and pats his friend’s shoulder twice before going back to the notebook in his hand. He glares daggers at it and resists the urge to toss it into the trash can down the hall. 

Oikawa felt like a long forgotten nightmare, days of extra practice and excessive drilling in the wake of the fatal last set against Karasuno in the semi-finals. As a first year he had thought it was a little too much when Yahaba would soon be captain but as a third year himself, now captain too, Kunimi knows it was a last ditch attempt to have some kind of control over the situation. Maybe the fallout would have been better had they lost to Shiratorizowa instead because at least then it would have been expected. The loss felt jarring to all of them, their last chance to make it all the way snatched from them by a ginger and a now humbled king. Each of them dealt with it in their own ways but Oikawa was always one step away from the edge of breakdown and it just pushed him over the edge. He pushed and pushed and pushed until he was resented by the team, the coaches, his fangirls and even Iwaziumi. After that, he just moved beyond Seijoh and claimed the reputation he helped build has already started to crumble in the remaining players’ hands. Kunimi remembers the relief that flooded him when the “Grand King” took his final stride through the gymnasium doors and never looked back. 

Kunimi closes his eyes, leans back his head and thinks, “The ghosts of our past never truly leave us alone, do they?” 

He collects himself and prepares for the reaction he knows will come from his best friend, “We have to read them.”

“We have to fucking what?” Kindaichi startles, staring wide-eyed at Kunimi as if he just grew an extra head. 

“The last seven pages are not notes. They don’t have his usual note-taking format and there is not a single trace of any color beyond the black pen used.”

Kindaichi sputters, “Yeah and he also overworked us then degraded us before leaving the country. We don’t have to do anything but burn that horrible notebook and live the rest of our lives happily, okay?”

Kunimi wishes he could do that, wishes he could just let this go but the thought is causing his chest to tighten at the thought of never finding out why. Why did he leave it in his locker? Did he do it on purpose? Why are his and Kindaichi’s names in it and how many others are in it too? Why did he even write anything about them if they were never going to purposely see it let alone hear it from the man himself? What was the reason?

“No, we can’t. Our names are in this, written by Oikawa for some godforsaken reason, and we deserve to know what he wrote about us.” 

“I hate it when you’re right,” grumbles Kindaichi as he finally takes a step away from his locker. 

“Which is always,” Kunimi hums, “Onisha, thank you for bringing this to us.”

Onisha rubs at his neck, “No problem. But can I have one last favor?”

Kunumi nods while Kindaichi folds his arms across his chest, “Sure.”

Onisha wets his lips and stares at them, determination turning warm eyes cold, “I want to know too. I vaguely remember the name Oikawa from my first year and your reactions aren’t living up to the reputation he had. I have his locker so I think I deserve to know about the details as well.”

“Listen, you really don’t want to dude. Oikawa was not everything he made people believe he was and you don’t want to be roped into this. I don’t even want to but my fate has been signed, sealed and delivered,” Kindaichi explains, hoping that maybe Onisha is as smart in common sense as he is academically. 

Onisha shakes his head, “But, Kindaichiー” 

Kunimi knows this can be drug out for a while. Kindaichi is quite stubborn and from the look in Onisha’s eyes, he is just as bad. Kunimi really needs to start charging people for being in his company when all he gets from it are headaches. 200 Yen an hour sounds pretty good to him but for Kindaichi he would charge 500 as a baseline. 

“Onisha can join the misery if he wants to. We have five minutes until we have to get to class but at lunch, we will all read the first page together. We’ll meet by the tree on the left courtyard and hopefully get some answers,” Kunimi interrupts the two from more arguments. 

“Ok, yeah. I’ll see you then,” Onisha nods before dashing away down the hall, rounding the left corner and disappearing from sight. 

“What a grand way to start our third year,” Kindaichi frowns.

“The year can only get better from here if this is our rock bottom. We will be okay so long as we don’t do anything stupid over the past ramblings of Oikawa.”

“Yeah,” Kindaichi nods but his eyes look far away, “I’ll meet you at lunch.”

Kunimi hums as he watches his friend slink away to class before spinning on his heel towards his own classroom. 

As he sits at the left back desk, closest to the window, he lets his mind wander over the dulled voice of his teacher welcoming everyone back. He can’t shake the feeling that somehow Oikawa planned this. He knows it is implausible, the guy hasn’t set foot here since he walked away but the thought still clings to his brain. Was he being set up for some elaborate past prank finally coming to fruition? No, not even Oikawa was that good of a planner let alone a prankster. The guy was a phenomenal puppet master though, pulling people however he needed them and discarding them after. 

Kunimi sighs as he looks back at the board in the classroom, now filled edge to edge with notes he didn’t take. This is going to be a very long year indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Am I going to do these characters justice? I will try but no promises. My brainrot has come back full force so here I am. I will try to update every Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. Hope you enjoyed this short snippet before we really dive into the plotline. Until next time: drink water, get plenty of sleep, don't procrastinate and have a wonderful week!


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